Robbert Dijkgraaf

IAS Director and Leon Levy Professor Robbert Dijkgraaf moderated a panel of Nobel Prize & Kavli Prize Laureates to discuss how curiosity-driven, blue-sky science can help address major challenges and prepare the world for an uncertain future post Covid-19.

Watch the video here.

“Trying to appreciate mathematics without understanding its inner workings is like reading a description of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony instead of hearing it.” Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon Levy Professor, on the differences between generic and exceptional beauty, and why one type of beauty proves more useful in describing the universe.

Robbert Dijkgraaf, IAS Director and Leon Levy Professor, remembers Freeman J. Dyson, the legendary physicist, writer, and fearless intellectual explorer who served on the Faculty in the School of Natural Sciences at the Institute for over 65 years. “As an eternal graduate student, a ‘rebel’ in his own words, Dyson was unafraid to question everything and everybody," writes Dijkgraaf in the PNAS. “… Perhaps he understood better than most that progress stems from disagreement more than agreement.”

On the podcast "The Joy of x," mathematician Steven Strogatz and Robbert Dijkgraaf, IAS Director and Leon Levy Professor, explore quantum reality, discussing the frontiers of string theory and why space and time might not be the most fundamental things in the universe.

The artwork by Robbert Dijkgraaf, Director and Leon Levy Professor, depicts Russian nesting to capture the different scales of knowledge about the natural world, from the largest matryoshka doll that depicts our universe through the cosmic microwave background, the “first light” emitted soon after the Big Bang, to the smallest doll, the Planck scale, where spacetime becomes a quantum phenomenon.

Schmidt Futures has awarded $1 million to the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) to leverage advances in high-performance computing to understand challenging astrophysical problems. The project, led by James M. Stone, Professor in the School of...

Watch Robbert Dijkgraaf, IAS Director and Leon Levy Professor, join distinguished scientists at the European Research Council conference in a panel debate on the role of frontier research with a view on sustainability. 

Robbert Dijkgraaf, IAS Director and Leon Levy Professor, will give the public lecture "Einstein's Dream—From the Big Bang to Black Holes" during the opening celebration of the Princeton Gravity Initiative on Thursday, November 7.

Dijkgraaf will speak...

Robbert Dijkgraaf, IAS Director and Leon Levy Professor, was awarded the inaugural Iris Medal for Excellent Science Communication for his ability to communicate the importance and beauty of science, to explain difficult concepts in a way that listeners can understand, and to combine logic with boundless imagination.